Three candidates are running to replace the termed-out Brian Jones in California Senate District 40, a massive district that covers San Marcos, Escondido, Poway, Santee, Alpine, Fallbrook and Ramona, as well as several northern neighborhoods in the city of San Diego.

Former San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott is the lone Democrat running for the seat currently held by Jones, a Republican. The two Republicans in the race are Ed Musgrove, a San Marcos city council member and former sheriff’s captain who’s been endorsed by Jones, and Kristie Bruce-Lane, a businesswoman and nonprofit leader who has twice been runner-up for state assembly seats and was previously elected to the board of directors for the Olivenhain Municipal Water District.

The top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary will move on to the general election in November. Given the candidates’ party affiliations, the primary is expected to function as an elimination round between Musgrove and Bruce-Lane to determine which of the Republicans will face Elliott in November.

While Musgrove has been endorsed by Jones and U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, Bruce-Lane has been endorsed by Carl DeMaio, a state assembly member and longtime San Diego political activist, as well as Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, one of the leading Republican candidates for governor.

The Republican Party of San Diego County did not endorse either candidate for the primary.

Ed Musgrove

Musgrove, 63, lives in the Twin Oaks Valley community in San Marcos. He grew up in Poway, graduating from Poway High School before joining the Army. Upon leaving the military, he joined the county Sheriff’s Office, working in a variety of roles, including as captain of the Santee station.

Musgrove points to his two years as the sheriff’s emergency response manager as being particularly relevant to his Senate candidacy, given the dangers that wildfires pose across California and in the district he hopes to represent, which covers much of rural San Diego County. The district also covers all or parts of Carmel Mountain, Mira Mesa, Miramar, Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Peñasquitos, Scripps Ranch and University City.

“How do we conduct evacuations? How do we safeguard first responders? I’ve done all of that,” Musgrove said in a recent interview with the Union-Tribune. “These are not foreign concepts to me.”

Musgrove credited that experience as a big reason why he’s endorsed by the California Professional Firefighters union and the unions that represent San Diego police officers, San Diego County sheriff’s deputies, California Highway Patrol officers and Cal Fire firefighters.

On top of the physical dangers posed by wildfires, Musgrove said California is “in a real situation with our homeowners insurance” when it comes to companies not covering residents in fire-prone areas. Musgrove said his own policy was not renewed for that very reason, and it’s an issue he hopes to tackle if elected.

If voters do send Musgrove or Bruce-Lane to Sacramento, either would be part of a small minority — the state Senate is currently composed of 30 Democrats and 10 Republicans.

Musgrove said there are enough issues of common interest that he could work across the aisle with Democrats, something he said he has experience doing at the San Diego Association of Governments.

He said his wide range of experience as a military veteran, a former law enforcement officer and an elected city council member set him apart from Bruce-Lane in the battle between the two Republicans.

And yes, the Senate hopeful is related to Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove; Ed is Joe’s uncle.

Kristie Bruce-Lane

Bruce-Lane, 53, lives in San Diego’s 4S Ranch neighborhood, and her campaign website describes her as a businesswoman who has had a “successful career in agriculture and health care.” She is also the founder and CEO of The Thumbprint Project Foundation, a nonprofit whose stated mission is to aid “in the transitional process of homeless children who have been impacted by childhood domestic violence.”

Bruce-Lane and her campaign did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, though she did submit answers to written questions sent to every candidate.

She wrote that the top three issues facing District 40, and also the first three things she’d focus on if elected, are the cost of living, illegal immigration and wasteful spending.

On the cost of living, Bruce-Lane wrote that she would “oppose every tax hike — like the crazy new mileage tax.” She also wrote she would “stop utility and insurance rate hikes by reforming costly mandates.”

On immigration, she wrote that “we need to get known criminals out of our communities and off our streets.” She wrote that “we also need to stop spending taxpayer dollars on freebies and welfare to people that aren’t legally supposed to be here … We need to pass voter ID and require citizenship verification and ID to vote.”

On wasteful spending, she wrote that California “has a spending problem.” She proposed auditing “every program to uncover fraud and waste” and using the “savings to improve core services.”

Bruce-Lane has twice run for a state legislative position, making it out of the primary to the general election each time. In 2022, she fell about 5,000 votes short against incumbent Brian Maienschein in the District 76 state assembly race; in the 2024 election for that same assembly seat, she lost to Darshana Patel.

In addition to DeMaio and Bianco, Bruce-Lane is endorsed by Richard Grenell, who served as U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence during the first Trump administration. Bruce-Lane also lists as endorsers the Riverside Sheriffs’ Association, Reform California and the San Diego County Gun Owners PAC.

Mara Elliott

Elliott, 57, lives in San Diego’s Scripps Ranch neighborhood. She has been an attorney since 1994, working in a variety of positions, including as a lawyer for the county, before she joined the City Attorney’s Office as a deputy in 2009. She was elected as the city attorney in 2016 and reelected in a landslide in 2020. She left office in 2024 due to term limits.

In a recent interview, Elliott acknowledged that as the lone Democrat, she is in an advantageous position at the moment, as she’s able to conserve her resources for the November general election while her Republican opponents compete against each other in the primary.

And while her opponents have split the endorsements of prominent conservatives, she has secured the endorsements of many local Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs and state Sens. Catherine Blakespear and Steve Padilla. She’s also endorsed by many major labor unions and organizations, including the San Diego and Imperial Labor Council, the California Federation of Teachers, SEUI California, UFCW California and AFSCME District Council 36.

Elliott has never before been a lawmaker, but she said her time as city attorney prepared her well for the role, since her office acted as legal advisor to the city. Rather than write and approve laws, she has spent much of her career evaluating laws that the county and city sought to pass.

“There are 40 senators … and nobody on the Senate has my experience as a prosecutor, but also as general counsel to large entities like the county, like the transit authority, like the city,” Elliott said. “So I have seen things, I know what works, I know when laws don’t work, I know when they don’t have the appropriate enforcement clauses in them, I know when they can be defended.”

Elliott said that when she meets voters, she asks them not to listen as much to the promises she and her opponents make, but instead to “look to what we’ve been able to achieve in our careers, and whether it’s changed your life for the better.” She said the work she did as city attorney “protected my community and did make people’s lives better.”

One of her proudest successes, she said, was the city’s pioneering use of gun violence restraining orders. Under Elliott’s leadership, the City Attorney’s Office began in 2018 to aggressively use red-flag laws to temporarily seize guns from people who posed a credible threat of violence. Her office became a leader in the practice, training hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the state on how to best go about obtaining the restraining orders.

“By the time I left office, we had intervened in over 1,500 situations, so there’s a lot of people alive today because of the work we did,” Elliott said.